It's easy to not care, anything bad can happen and you can blissfully wash your hands of it. You don't care, so it doesn't matter.
I remember being a teenager, my defense against anything bad that happened to me was, "I don't care" with a snide attitude. I was lying, I did care, but I built up a mindset that not caring about anything made me stronger.
As an adult, I know this is wrong. Caring requires strength. Caring is hard. That's why we need to do it.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who is now no longer my friend. He said, "so, what you're saying is, you go out of your way to try and deeply understand as much of everything as you can?"
I answered, "Yes. Being curious about others, issues outside of myself, and the world around me, is in my opinion, a moral good."
His only response was, "that's not for me, that sounds exhausting."
We started the conversation because he was openly making fun of other people who were not like him. He thought it was okay to laugh at other people for being different. To mock others if their differences were amusing to him.
His lack of curiosity, his lack of caring for others made him a repulsive person. Be careful what you choose to "not care" about.
There's big things we should care about, and then there's little things we shouldn't. How the towels are folded, or the ring of water on the coffee table. When we give those things too much care, we transform the mundane into a battle. And then, every second of our everyday life becomes a battleground, a game of tug of war. We turn little issues into big ones that occupy our minds.
It's a line we have to toe. Not enough care and we are husks. Too much care and we are an anxious, brittle mess. We have to pick our battles, and we have to acknowledge that not all battles have a winner. Sometimes, there are only losers.
There is a sense of honour and zen in doing the mundane as perfectly as possible. Not to achieve perfection but strive towards the ideal within reason.
This is something I recently spoke with my father about. He was annoyed with trying to keep toxic mushrooms out of his yard. It was tedious and complicated.
Then he embraced the struggle, and looked at it the same way he used to train in martial arts. As a chosen striving towards an ideal.
He “monk-moded” his gardening and found joy in a mundane, repetitive task.
Through caring, he turned anxiety and annoyance into peace and acceptance.
He also won the battle against the mushrooms after 2 years of diligent effort.